Jennifer Hudson fake-crying through her acceptance. Please.
The Oscars is the one night these unseen people get their recognition. When people think of their favorite movies they’ll come up with the stars and the director. Jobs like Editing, Score, and Screenplay make movies what they are, but those poor guys are never recognized.
Cut out the songs and the lame skits. Throw away all of the montages except the one for honoring those who have died. And for God’s sake give the “lesser” winners more than 30 seconds after they gain their composure. This is one the biggest moments of their lives, let them enjoy it. Leo and Al can wait.
You might want to check out this link before making asumptions about the genuineness of Chicago’s own Jennifer Hudson.
My Major Nitpick
To All Actors:
People pay you millions of dollars to act in films, so how fuckin’ hard is it to memorize a 60 second speech?! Are you telling me that it is too difficult to MEMORIZE the words, “I want to thank the Academy, Joe, Stuart, Mom and little Billy.” Do you really have to reach into a $1500 tux, or $28,000 dress and pull out a tacky paper napkin and incoherently stammer a 75 word text in a dull monotone? Exactly how stupid and dyslexic are you?
And if you are too stupid to remember a couple of lines of dialog, and you simply have to read the 75 words off your napkin, at least look up once in awhile…every kid in Speech 101 has learned how to read and look at the audience at the same time.
PS I know that set designers and editors usually work in a tiny dark room and never speak to more than 4 people at one time, so I will cut them some slack - but amazingly, they usually seem to be able to sputter out a few coherent words without the aid of a cheat-sheet.
Anybody else notice that the voice-over when “The Departed” won best adapted screenplay said that it was based on a Japanese movie? Nice work, guys.
On that note, Scorcese’s long term wonder film editor Thelma Schoonmaker was ever so gracious in her acceptance speech. Honestly, this is the person who makes film dreams fly, bit by bit. She was decent and gracious, and too modest, really. I’m glad she got the accolades.
Everything that’s wrong with the show has to do with trying to “sell” the show in middle America. These shows are put on by Professional Show Bisness people, with Professional performers and professional writers. It’s not as if they don’t know how to entertain. But Pilobus? Celine Dion?
If you want to see what kind of show these very same people are capable of putting on when they aren’t worried about about audience share, watch one of the reruns of the Independent Spirit Awards on AMC or IFC.
I’d be willing to bet that he was asked to do a little monologue before presenting the award.
The Oscar show is not long enough. I want it to be longer. No one is forced to watch the show. The Oscar acceptance speeches? They should let the winners speak longer than 45 seconds (altough I notice they waive that time limit for the winning actors, director, and producers). If you can’t sit through two minutes of an acceptance speech, the problem is with you, not them. This is their night.
As for why Liz Taylor and Paul Newman weren’t presenting: the producers are trying to get a demographic somewhere below 70 years. Virtually all those named above (not Taylor) have appeared on the Oscar telecasts in the last five years; e.g., Streisand gave an honorary award to Redford in 2002. Hoffman was an Oscar presenter last year, and already presented at the Golden Globes this year.
The few things I appreciate are the montages (that directly relate to something), the ‘lesser’ categories (but it would probably be a big boon to those who’d rather not watch them if that portion was exclusively shown on IFC or Bravo), pretty outfits and non-scripted humor. This year I was greeted with the worst host I’ve ever seen (and I’ve been watching since back in the mid 70s) and had to struggle to stay awake, fugly dresses, STUPID humor at every turn and lots of pouting. The chick from Babel could hardly contain her disdain. 
And she wasn’t the only one I saw, just the only one I remember.
I did like the penguin people though.
Also, there’s nothing like having a DVR that turns the umpty-hundred hour broadcast down to 47 minutes. Even with that, Ellen was putting me to sleep. Bring back Jon! Bring back Whoopie! Hell, even bring back Letterman. Ok, not really. But I gotta see if I’ve caused you to slumber…
< — Thus sayeth Nicholson in all his red carpet finery. Heh.
The “foreign movie” montage had a few surprises (“Closely Watched Trains” - Czeck New Wave REPRESENT!), but some GAPING holes - no Ozu, no Herzog, no Rohmer…
Peter O’Toole, who looks like he’s about six minutes from death, has still not received the award after a career which has netted him quite a few nominations. Forest Whitaker is one of those actors who plays Forest Whitaker. Not that that’s bad, he’s a good actor, but he has many years ahead of him to prove his mettle and win his statue. But no, the academy needs to start making a politically correct statement (to go along with their numerous other cultural statements) by giving Whitaker the award on his first nomination. O’Toole was the only classically trained actor of the bunch who were nominated, with the rest coming up through the ranks as rappers and models. Watch as O’Toole gets wheeled up onstage in a few years to accept his honorary Lifetime Achievement mention as some kind of afterthought for a lifetime of nominations but no awards. “Sorry Peter, we got on a roll with that whole politically correct thing for a few years and had to give them to people who weren’t white.”
I love how Hollywood, the generally accepted epicenter of all that is vain, shallow, wasteful and arrogant about America, makes it their collective mission to get up on a golden soapbox to lecture the world on the political topics du jour. Energy conservation, political relations, race equality, global ecology. Al Gore’s been minted as their new political mascot for espousing said agendas to boot. I voted for the man, but only because he was, to use the tired cliche, the lesser of two evils. Now I know he’s crazy for sure … Hollywood adores him. These folks are, after all, the same people who said we were entering a new ice age a few years back. Now they say we’re all gonna melt instead. I wonder what changed since then.
Reese Witherspoon looked like a porn starlet. What? That’s not a nitpick, you say? No, it isn’t. Just thought I’d share my lustful adoration for her. She’s about the only reason that I managed to get through more than ten minutes of that root canal called ‘Walk The Line’.
He already received his Honorary Lifetime Achievement Award Oscar in 2003…and at the time, joked that his career wasn’t over yet. Of course, no one really expected him to actually get another nomination - but that may be one reason that he didn’t win as the voters probably thought, “well, he did get an Oscar from us a couple years ago, granted - it was an honorary Oscar, but still…”
Peter O’Toole was already awarded an honorary Oscar in 2003, essentially for lifetime achievement. He states in interviews that he still wants to win the Best Actor award one day, of course.
I would have been very happy to see O’Toole win this year, but Whitaker gave an amazing performance as Idi Amin and I can’t begrudge him the Oscar. Why should it matter that it was his first nomination? Best Actor Oscars are supposed to be awarded for specific performances, not as a consolation for not winning after several past nominations. I can see arguments in favor of both O’Toole and Whitaker this year, and I don’t think that the latter’s win needs to be put down to “political correctness”.
The nominated songs. They are almost always AWFUL by themselves, fairly dire as a group, and presented in the worst possible light at the awards ceremony. There have been a few exceptions.
What, Dreamgirls was all about '60s Motown, and it was a musical, and that was the crap they came up with? Honestly. (Note that I’m not ragging on the singers, who really did their best to put it across.) Ennio Morricone deserved his award, but the best they could do was Celine Dion? Come on.
I’m sorry, if these people are all that talented, the music sections could at least come up to the entertainment level of the Super Bowl halftime show (although it’s true that this year’s would have been hard to beat).
Of all the presentations I liked Melissa’s the best, and even at that I didn’t think much of the song…but I’m glad she won. It was the best in a totally lame field, and the sad thing is that it’s almost always a totally lame field.
I also just grind my teeth when people accepting their awards say things like, “Wow, look what God can do.” Yeah, the Big Guy totally led you through it, unlike the other 40 million people who wanted desperately to be in just that spot but who somehow offended Him. You are the annointed one. Make sure everybody knows it. (Although this is hardly the organizers’ fault.)
I don’t even want to think about how much Nicole, Gwyneth, et al. spent on getting their hair (fake or real) to the degree of absolute straightness that I could achieve with an ironing board back in the day. Other people could achieve it by merely walking in the rain. Sorry, but that is not glamour hair. The effort was wasted and should have been spent on something that looked done.
I didn’t watch the Oscars so I can’t comment on the actual presentation, but I will mention my thoughts about the winners and losers this year.
First, I’m glad Scorsese finally got his Oscar. I don’t think many people believe the Departed is his best film (or even the best film of '06), but he had to win eventually.
I’m glad Babel utterly failed. It shouldn’t have been nominated in the first place. For anything.
I’m very happy that Pan’s Labyrinth won 3 Oscars – it’s an awesome film in every respect. I’m a little surprised it didn’t take the Best Foreign Film award too, but I hear that Lives of Others is a worthy recipient. I look forward to seeing it.
**
Children of Men** got a bit snubbed. It should’ve taken best editing or cinematography.
Cars really got shafted. It was not Pixar’s greatest film, but it was the best animated film by a long shot. Maybe the academy members are tired of giving Oscars to Pixar every other year. More likely, **Cars **was released too early in 2006 to be remembered.
Ok, I’m donning my crash helmet and asbestos suit for this, but I get a little annoyed that for the last few years the overwhelming number of acting awards have gone to actors who basically impersonate other, well known, people - Helen Mirren, Forrest Whittaker, Reese Witherspoon, PS Hoffman, Cate Blanchett, Jamie Foxx.
Maybe I am displaying my ignorance, but I just see that as less of a proof of the actors craft as actually developing and inhabiting an original character.
mm
That’s a good point. It seems like it’s either an impersonation of someone famous, or playing someone with a disability, a la Rainman/Dustin Hoffman, My Left Foot/Daniel Day Lewis, Forrest Gump/Tom Hanks, Leaving Las Vegas/Nicolas Cage…I’m sure there are others but I can’t think of them right now.
I totally agree with Hilarity N. Suze about the Original Song category. It should be done away with, period.
Wookinpanub, Ellen hosted the Grammies a few years ago, I believe.
I think that Cate had the toughest job ever totally being Hepburn because there was so much that had to be portrayed to seem sincere, too many quirks that could’ve just ended up a parody and lots of ‘stature’ (similar to anyone acting as Marilyn or Audrey) to live up to/overcome. She was phenomenal and nailed it perfectly. I swear, it was almost as if Katherine were on screen after all.
Other than that caveat, I agree.
I don’t want to log into their site. But I’m not blind. There wasn’t a tear one on her face or in her eyes while she “sobbed” through her little speech. This is a favorite routine with actresses going way back.